A few years ago, while Xavier and I were still living in Northern Virginia, he had to go to Seattle for a week long of conferences and I took the opportunity to tag along, so I would have time to visit the city while he was busy working. One of the things I did while I was there, on top of enjoying many sightseeing without encountering, it needs to be said, an inch of rain for as long as we stayed, one of the things I did was to visit with a former parishioner who had moved in that area a few months before. We met for lunch and talked about our lives, she had just celebrated her 70th birthday that week, and as she was sharing about her many experiences, she said to me something I have never forgotten and keep pondering to this day: “Life is long” she said. Life is long. And I still remember that because it sort of came to me as a shock. So often we hear the exact opposite, don’t we, and this whether in our secular culture: Life is short, enjoy! Travel, spend your money! Or as a kind of a worldly wisdom: Life is short! Spend time with your kids, quit the stressful job! And we even hear it in church quite often: Life is short! Make it right with God, don’t plan to do tomorrow the good you can do today! And so, even if it is for different reasons, it seems that “Life is short” is something we can all agree on. Who would dare to say that Life is long, except maybe some bored, ungrateful teenager?
In her defense, I think Elisabeth, that was her name, meant it in a good way. Although she wasn’t that young anymore, she had just had a major life change having moved cross-country and she was also getting ready to get married. She hadn’t been that happy on the East Coast and in her two previous marriages, and so she had a last an opportunity for a do over. And so that’s from this point of view that she could observe that, contrarily to what we are taught, Life, occasionally, can be long: There is time, there is hope, there are mistakes but we figure it out as we go. It can be long because it’s boring and lonely or just plain exhausting, but also because it gives us unexpected gifts, new chances and new horizons we would have never thought to be possible.
I like it that Jesus, who had such a short life if you think about it, had actually anticipated this paradoxical sense of time most of us have: Yes life is short, we see it and we feel it or at least we know we shouldn’t forget about it, but deep down we also experience that, for better or worse, life can also be long. Right before the passage of the Gospel we have just read this morning, Jesus tells the story of “The wicked Servant”. A man whose Master goes away on a trip, and thinking he has all the time in the world, the servant starts taking advantage of his Master’s leave and behaves badly, only to be caught and punished harshly because the Master comes back much earlier than what the man had anticipated. The time was short. But today the story is sort of reversed. Ten bridesmaids get ready to join a wedding party, and five of them, in their excitement, don’t anticipate that they will have to wait late for the Bridegroom. They don’t bring enough oil to keep their lamps burning through the night, and be able to join the cortege when the fiancé would finally show up. They thought the time would be short, but in fact it was long, so long that they all fell asleep.
Now this story is believed to have been put in Matthew’s Gospel for those believers who, like the bridesmaids, were expecting Jesus to come back right way after his Resurrection to bring his kingdom down on earth – but then they kept waiting twenty, thirty years, so long that indeed many “fell asleep”, a well known metaphor for death in the New Testament. This “delayed return of Christ” is, in fact, what our reading from the First Letter to the Thessalonians is all about, when the author is trying to help believers cope with their disappointment.
For most of us I guess, at least in the Episcopal Church, the return of Christ, what we have come to call the “Second coming” isn’t something we are overly obsessed about. Sometimes for good, we haven’t developed some terrifying imagery around the Judgment like the Left behind series have done, and another positive point is that we think this time on earth is valuable, we have things to do, good things to do, taking care of our planet for the next generation, taking care of one another. But maybe sometimes also, the way we don’t anticipate Jesus’s imminent return has led us to become a bit too comfortable or even sleepy, and we spend lots of time deliberating about liturgical points, writings reports to the Diocese and attending meetings. For us, contrarily to a bunch of non denominational churches always getting ready for the end of times, we’re more like “Our time has no end”, we’re a church where the time is long, and sometimes too long. And the truth is that we can lose our spark in the process.
Today in our parable, Jesus is talking about ten bridesmaids and this is not a coincidence, ten people was the required number in Jewish law to have a public assembly – and so it’s about his church that has to be waiting for him “the fiancé” – a well known image for God throughout the Hebrew Bible, and especially in Isaiah where God is compared to a bridegroom rejoicing over his bride Israel (62:5). What is more difficult to say is what the oil Jesus talks about really stands for. Many theologians have been scratching their heads, wondering if it is an image for faith, for love, for the Holy Spirit? But the thing is, it does not have to be a symbol for something else, I think we all know what it means to run out of oil, to run out of gas, to have our light dim and, as I have just mentioned, to lose our spark. We know about counselors telling those who have been married for many years that they need to “rekindle the flame”, and it’s also true of hard workers who started their professional life with a passion only to find themselves “burn out” after a while, unable to sustain the fire that used to keep them going. Well, it looks like something similar may also happen to us in our life of faith. At some point we have to ask ourselves how we can sustain the light inside of us, as we face the darkness of the world and as we have to cope with uncertainties about the future. And the thicker the darkness gets, the harder it can be to maintain the flame. For this reason, I really wish that Jesus would tell us how we do get more oil, but the fact is, when we look at the parable, he doesn’t say anything about it. Actually he even seems to say that nobody can give us from their oil! And for those who go on an “oil hunt” as do the five bridesmaids, they only take the risk to lose sight of him completely. Rather, Jesus says, the oil is just something we have to have with us.
So how do we do that? I think this is actually what a lot of church leaders as well as church members wonder about today: How do we keep being a light, and shinning a light for all those who want to join the procession until the bridegroom and the kingdom is among us?
Well, maybe we’ll have the beginning of an answer at the end of Luke’s Gospel, where we find two disciples who have clearly lost their spark, two disciples disheartened and mourning stumbling on their way to Emmaus, and then they meet this stranger who explain to them the Scriptures and share the bread with them and, as they lose sight of him again, they ask: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”. “Were not our hearts burning within us?” For all of us who love Jesus I guess we know what they mean. To feel our hearts burning within ourselves, but then also not so much.
And so, that’s where I see the beginning of an answer in the conversation of the disciples: “Weren’t our hearts burning within us?” because that’s when the flame was rekindled: As he explained the Scriptures, as he talked with us, as he shared the bread. Maybe if our eyes cannot see him in plain sight coming at the corner of the street, emerging from darkness, we can still spend time with him right now. Jesus isn’t a project for later, at his second coming, at the resurrection, or when we have finally figured our life out. Maybe he is right here in the darkness and for those among us who think the time is short, and for those among us who think the time is long, for all of us the time is now. Yes the Kingdom will be inaugurated when the trumpet sounds, when a voice cries at the corner of the street, but for those who anticipate his coming, he does make himself known already.
What is the remedy when we lose our spark or when we are being burned out? Counselors may say we need to travel, to start new activities, to reinvent ourselves or to reorganize our daily tasks…But the answer often comes down to the same truth: You need to spend time together, you need to rest, you have to slow down. Whether it’s about our marriage, our job or our faith, the response is the same because problem is the same: Too much doing and not enough being. So if your light is flickering, maybe just go and be with God. I know a lot of you come here and have a job to do, that’s good and in this stewardship season we have been thinking about the different ways we can serve God in the church. But we cannot go anywhere without gas, and we cannot be on fire without oil. Sometimes we also need to just sit and wait for God, to sit and wait with God. Time can be long but it’s okay because it’s not a bad thing when we keep watch. Maybe in fact, this is all we have to do: To keep our light burning and be a witness in the darkness of the world that a lover is coming and a party is to be expected. It is the time of betrothal, the time of longing that should deepen our desire for God rather than extinguish it. I think the end of the parable is a bit scary when the door shuts and the bridegroom tells the five latecomers that he doesn’t know them. Maybe the problem is not whether life is long or short, maybe the thing is that this life is given to us with many opportunities to get to know Him and to make him known, and how are we going to use this time that is given to us to do just that?